By
Adam "StoneTable" Israel (mailto:stone@arstechnica.com)
and
Jorge "whiprush" Castro (mailto:jorge@whiprush.org)
LinuxWorld started this Tuesday in
"We will do no Linux client development in a closed way. In the past we've done
this with, for example, our printing UI work in XD2, which we didn't release
into CVS until we released the product. This pattern won't repeat in the future;
we hope to move all our desktop development into public CVS/the public eye over
the next couple months."
and it looks like Evolution will start to get more attention:
"Evolution will undergo a significant renaissance. Besides building S/MIME
support and, obviously, a groupwise connector, we are going to do some things to
make Evolution into the best candidate for a deeply integrated GNOME groupware
suite. We're going to open up the development a lot more, stabilize and freeze
the integration APIs, and move to a time-based release schedule. We really want
Evolution to be a part of the desktop, not just a separate application."
IBM pulled off a double whammy as it and SuSE
announced (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&ncid=738&e=1&u=/nm/20030805/tc_nm/tech_ibm_linux_dc)
that they have been awarded Evaluation Assurance Level 2 (EAL2) of the Common
Criteria security certification, bringing important credentials that are
necessary for high profile government contracts. IBM also announced better
support for
Lotus products (http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=4873)
on Linux. Could we finally see a Linux Notes Client?
RedHat
announced (http://newsobserver.com/business/story/2741991p-2542002c.html)
new customers and partners, while
Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/)
announced its long awaited
1.4 release (http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml),
including the Gentoo Reference Platform (GRP), which are pre-built binaries for
the impatient. Apparently the traffic around their booth was healthy and people
were very interested in Gentoo. Gentoo is the compile-it-yourself Linux
distribution for those of you DIYers. Pop in a "Live CD Installation" and
install from pre-built packages. For extreme performance you can rebuild all
packages optimized for your system and architecture.
Sun, deciding it likes Linux this week, joined the
Open Source Development Lab (http://news.com.com/2100-7252_3-5060143.html)
whilst
warning customers (http://www.infoconomy.com/pages/news-and-gossip/group83187.adp)
about the dangers of Open Source. Sun also unveiled an alpha of their new "Mad
Hatter" desktop solution and boasted
"ruthless commitment" (http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/2245441)
to Linux. Ruthless apparently does not include any plan to
Open Source Java (http://news.com.com/2100-7252-5060427.html?tag=nl).
Real Networks
announced (http://news.com.com/2100-7252-5060493.html?tag=nl)
their intention to produce an Open Source media player. The audio and video
codecs will remain closed, so we don't expect people to abandon MPlayer or Xine
anytime soon. Still, someone must appreciate Real and their Helix
Community, since their products have been
nominated (http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/linuxworldny03/V40/press.cvn?id=11&p_id=20)
for the Product Excellence Awards (formerly known as the Open Source
Product Excellence Awards). We find it ironic that any Real Networks product
would ever be mentioned in an award with the word Excellence in it, and
to top it off, the little-known but Real-sponsored
Helix Community (https://www.helixcommunity.org/)
is nominated for "Best Open Source Community". Notable absentees from the
nominations include Mozilla.org, PostgreSQL, and any useful tool without a
corporate sponsor.
Both Greenfly and WildBill attended LinuxWorld and commented on the shift away
from community projects to a more commercial feel. While it is nice that Linux
is now mainstream and supported by large companies, it should be noted that a
Linux show running its website on IIS and no Debian booth should be taken with a
grain of salt.
It is pretty easy for a new Linux user to get lost in the jargon, especially if
you've never used UNIX in the first place. IBM has put together a comprehensive
Linux Guide (http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-start.html)
for beginners. It starts from the beginning and takes you through some pretty
important things you need to know, as well as turning you to a good deal of
reference links. The
Linux Glossary for Windows
Users (http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-gloss/)
is newbie gold, and veterans will appreciate the information to give to their
friends and colleagues just starting out with Linux. And lastly, our own Linux
community here at Ars has it's own
list of links (http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=96509133&m=549099862)
of places to start.
One of the most common pieces of functionality people miss when they start using
Linux is an "MS Access for Linux". While not a direct drop in replacement for
Access, Openoffice.org has it's own method for accessing a datasource, from just
about any kind of database. This
article (http://articles.linmagau.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=230&page=1)
covers how to use Openoffice.org with almost any database using ODBC or JDBC, as
well as native drivers.
Another solution would be to just use
MySQL (http://www.washington.edu/computing/web/publishing/mysql-access.html)
as a back end to Access clients. This is an excellent way to consolidate many
Access databases, like you would find running in a business environment, putting
them in one place where you can back them up easily.
Linux seems to be the gaining ground in the supercomputing field as Fujitsu
announced its intention to
one up (http://www.idg.com.sg/idgwww.nsf/unidlookup/D449F7F8BF3C2E9248256D75001FD8AD?OpenDocument)
IBM for the fastest Linux machine in the world crown. While a Linux Networx's
MCR Linux Cluster holds a comfortable
third place (http://www.top500.org/list/2003/06/)
on the Top 500 Supercomputer list, both IBM and Fujitsu's offerings would
trounce it, putting Linux in 3 of the Top 5 Supercomputers in the world. IBM's
cluster will use AMD's Opteron 246 processors, while the CPU for the Fujitsu is
still unannounced. Dell is also jumping on the bandwagon by announcing yet
another cluster, this time for the
NCSA (http://www.enterprisenetworksandservers.com/newsflash/art.php/122)
which would also be in the Top 5.
And let's not forget Cray's rebirth with
Red Storm (http://www.cray.com/news/0206/sandia.html),
due in 2004. With both Opteron and Itanium becoming more popular for high end
tasks, is Linux the natural choice for such applications? If the list from
two years ago (http://www.top500.org/dlist/2001/06/)
is any indication, Linux's growth area in this field is impressive.
This past week brought us
SIGGRAPH (http://www.siggraph.org/),
the annual conference of computer graphics. SGI and the OpenGL Architecture
Review Board
announced the specifications (http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2003/july/opengl15.html)
for OpenGL 1.5.
"Suppose, instead of taking months to create, the breathtaking
computer-graphics-generated scenes from any of this summer's blockbuster movies
could be rendered with cinematic quality in real time. Suppose a car designer
could model a car that's indistinguishable from a photograph. Or imagine a jet
fighter training simulation that could look not "just pretty good," but be so
exact that you couldn't distinguish the simulated scenery from the real thing.
Or suppose a physician could see tumors one-third the size of what could
previously be identified. These things are not only possiblethey have already
begun. The new frontier in graphics realism has been established with
developments to the OpenGL. application programming interface (API), released by
SGI (NYSE: SGI) and the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB)."
At the same time SGI and Sun Microsystems
announced (http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2003/july/sgisun_opengl.html)
their partnership in developing Java bindings to OpenGL. It makes sense to allow
the two popular cross-platform development tools to interact smoothly. The
boasts of OpenGL 1.5 sound promising to my ears, but writing an OpenGL version
of Hello World hardly qualifies me as an expert. I'm interested in the
impressions from anyone who uses OpenGL on a regular basis. Hit that discussion
link and tell us what you think.
A group of
feodora-wearing (http://www.redhat.com/)
developers has
released (http://people.redhat.com/~jhealy/eclipse/)
a version of the popular IDE
Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/).
They used a modified version of
GCJ (http://gcc.gnu.org/java/),
the GNU project's Java compiler to natively build Eclipse. By having a native
build using libgcj instead of the Java Virtual Machine, start-up time should be
faster.
Eclipse is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), based upon code that IBM
open sourced a few years ago. The Eclipse Consortium was born, and soon
Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, SAP AG,
Scripts are a great place to look for tips. They usually contain shortcuts that
can easily be applied elsewhere. Thanks to greenfly for suggesting this weeks
tips.
Commonly referred to as the
backtick (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=backtick),
the grave accent has a special purpose on the command line - command
substitution. The command between the backticks is executed and the result
substituted in the current command. This first example shows how you can find
the modules of the currently running kernel.
stone@moria:~$ cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/
stone@moria:/lib/modules/2.4.19-686$
Pretty nifty, right? Here's another handy one. This uses
ImageMagick (http://www.imagemagick.org/),
one of my personal favorites, to capture a screenshot of your desktop.
stone@moria:~$ import -window root desktop-`date +%Y-%m-%d`.jpg
stone@moria:~$ ls desktop*
desktop-2003-08-07.jpg
Last, but not least, we bring you reverse pattern searching through your command
history. This is useful for searching for long commands. Hit control-r
and start typing. Hit control-r again to cycle through all occurances of
the pattern.
(reverse-i-search)`ping': ping www.arstechnica.com
Picking an application to spotlight every week isn't easy (hint: send us your
favorite), but this week's choice was easy: OfflineIMAP.
OfflineIMAP (http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/offlineimap/)
is a tool that synchronizes your IMAP with your Maildirs, allowing you to manage
your email offline from multiple machines or with an email client that has poor
or no IMAP support. This should make all of us pine users rejoice with delight.
It is especially useful for laptop users who might be on a dial up connection.
Since OfflineIMAP is multi-threaded, its performance is usually much better than
most mail clients. It is also smart enough to synchronize between multiple
machines.
Administrators will want to check out OfflineIMAP for one major feature that
we've never found in any mail tool --- the ability to copy mail from one IMAP
server to another without the need for an intermediary step. This means
you can move existing mail from server to server without having to copy it to a
local machine. To top it all off, OfflineIMAP can load a Python script from
within its configuration file so you can tailor it to your needs.